


Subterfuge (The Tapestry Thread Remix)

by runobody2



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Doomed Timelines, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 14:22:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7577449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runobody2/pseuds/runobody2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She doesn't skip town as soon as the timeline begins to go awry, and stays, instead, to watch the trainwreck. For Aradia, it unfurls itself not only slowly but broadly; the others, caught in their own tragedies, lack the perspective. But Aradia has all the time in the world, and then some; she's made of it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subterfuge (The Tapestry Thread Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [digimaniac33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/digimaniac33/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Subterfuge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5632057) by [digimaniac33](https://archiveofourown.org/users/digimaniac33/pseuds/digimaniac33). 



> I absolutely loved the idea of the original fic, and had almost immediately the idea to write Aradia's perspective. I hope you enjoy!

She doesn't skip town as soon as the timeline begins to go awry, and stays, instead, to watch the trainwreck. For Aradia, it unfurls itself not only slowly but broadly; the others, caught in their own tragedies, lack the perspective. But Aradia has all the time in the world, and then some; she's made of it.

This timeline's death rattle begins with Terezi's untimely demise. She isn't often the first to die, Aradia knows-doomed timelines and robot bodies make for nifty death statistics. She could quote percentages in disconcertingly coincidental variations of 4, 1 and 3, if she tried, but the numbers are irrelevant.

What is relevant: Terezi's deaths, which, though few and far between, have always lead to a branching away from the Alpha. A few times, Terezi has reached godtier and doomed herself thus; one more life sacrificed on the altar of causality is peanuts to paradox space. The other trolls might wonder at the arbitrary nature of timeline failure- what can one do? Why bother trying, if success as often as failure can lead to a dead end?

Aradia, closer and farther from the issue than most, knows that they're both right and wrong. She knows its about relevance, about what story has already been told and what story will be told. The script has been set already, and now all anyone has to do is follow it, even if they don't know the words.

Aradia can feel the moment some relevant event occurs that wasn't supposed to, and the subsequent fading and ebbing of a timeline. It takes a little while after, usually, for the timeline to fall apart in other ways. Often, when Terezi dies, it is the implications of Karkat's subsequent breakdown that begins the obvious devolution; the fraying around the edges endemic to all doomed timelines.

This time, the falling apart isn't Karkat's doing at all, who succeeds nobly at holding himself together, up until the moment Vriska murders him in a seeming fit of pique.

Aradia watches from afar, of course. Vriska sits on the railing at the top of Terezi's treehouse afterwards, kicking her feet idly. _Do you know how many times, so far, that you've been tangentially or not the cause of Terezi's death?_ Aradia thinks. _Do you know how many times it's happened the other way around?_

(This time was nothing of the sort. A well-conceived but fatally executed mission to Derse. The mission itself is still vital, but Terezi's death is unwarranted.)

Aradia reaches, and draws away the seconds-minutes-days as if they were a cloak. She reaches, and jumps back in time.

* * *

 

It's the first time, of course, that she's gone so far back. A strange thing to remember, that each doomed Aradiabot is beholden to only one doomed timeline. Once, however, this Aradia had used her powers to peer a little further into her past, mixed memory with a little magic in order to survey her younger self. She'd looked at lots of moments, each scene a bright bead on the string of time; a quiet night spent with her lusus at two sweeps, the day she'd found her Troll Indiana Jones hat in the ruins around her hive and how comfortable it had been when she'd put it on (if a little large- she'd grow into it), her first time meeting Sollux, and Tavros, and Vriska, and Terezi. Her death. How young she'd looked! How young everyone looked, still.

Aradia thinks back to meeting Terezi. Terezi had quirked her head and asked "Are you Aradia?"

"Who's asking?" Aradia had said, warily. Strange trolls approaching down otherwise deserted roads who knew her name are generally bad news, especially when their blood color was half a dozen degrees of separation above your own.

"A fellow traveler. I will be joining you on your mission to accost Sollux's hive." And then she had, stepping in besides Aradia, beyond question.

Aradia blinked. "You know him?"

"And he's told me enough about you that I know you, too," Terezi had said.

"Are you sure it wasn't just a lucky guess?"

"No such thing," she'd said, and her grin had been an icepick.

* * *

When Aradia arrives in this other time, this time before time, she sends a message to the current Alpha Aradia to explain her mission. Then she looks around, finds everything as she left it, if not everyone. Terezi's tree, bright in its clearing, decked with white stairs and platforms leading up up up. Vriska's gone, but Terezi is still inside, preparing for the mission that will kill her, if Aradia does nothing.

Aradia does not do nothing. She watches, for a moment, Terezi in the living flesh. Terezi, tapping her cane before her alchemiter impatiently. Even in the midst of what she must think is as much privacy as the game will afford, her movements are laced with a sort of electrified deliberateness, in the rhythm of her cane and the ramrod still of her spine and her settling grin when the alchemiter produces a pair of cherry red rocket wings.

Aradia doesn't bother ringing the doorbell, and instead flies all the way up to the highest boughs of the tree and then through Terezi's window.

"Oh. Hey, Aradia," Terezi says, bright but wary. Aradia abruptly registers the thought that Terezi has not seen her since her death. It's the sort of realization that is not so much the realized fact but the fact having been slotted into some new context.

This Aradia has seen Terezi more recently, just once; she had flown up to Derse to survey Terezi's corpse. Her mouth had been crooked into a very small tight frown, as if she'd been considering a difficult nuance of a scalemate trial and not her imminent death.

"Hello, Terezi," Aradia replied, putting away her music boxes. "I will be joining you on your mission to Derse."

Behind her shades, Terezi raises an eyebrow. Aradia wonders if she remembers that first meeting; knows the way the tilt of her chin now, delineated sharply against the color of the wall behind her, recalls it. Instead, Terezi says, "Oh? And why would I be going to Derse? That's not part of Karkat's little plan."

Not untrue, of course. It doesn't faze Aradia. "Correct, Karkat knows nothing about this mission. You're going to Derse as a factor of your own Operation Regisurp, and I will be accompanying you. Now that you have the ability to fly, we can begin." She thinks of what Terezi had said that other time, about lucky guesses. No such thing, Terezi had told her.

She flies out the window, and Terezi follows her. Outside in the land of thought and flow, the sky throbs a net of green on black, but Aradia aims through them, up and away.


End file.
